Campus Directory

Division Graduate Studies Division

Department/College/Unit History Department

Title PhD Candidate

Graduate Major History

Affiliation Graduate

Primary Office Location Remote work location
Zoom

Office Hours for Students/ Office Hours By appointment (email)

Mail Stop History Department

Biography, Education and Training

Currently, I am in my 6th year of graduate school, working on a dissertation tentatively titled "Mapping Imperial Japan’s Greatest Calamities: Learning Nation and Enacting Empire Through Disaster." My research centers around how people's experiences with and memories of crises and catastrophes shape society over time through moments of memory-making. Specifically, my research focuses on how the annual anniversaries of the 1923 Great Kantō Disaster and other disasters were used for various political and social programming during Japan's imperial period. 

CV - 2024

THI Grad Profile

Education:

B.A., Anthropology, California State University, Chico

B.A., Humanities, California State University, Chico

M.A., History, University of California, Santa Cruz

Summary of Expertise

Teaching Experience:

• Lecturer, “JAPN 410: Quakes and Nukes: (Un)Natural Japanese Environments,” California State University, Monterey Bay. In-person upper-division course.  •  Spring 2023
• Teaching assistant • 2020-2024

Research Experience:

• Graduate Student Researcher for Dean of Humanities Jasmine Alinder, University of California, Santa Cruz • 2021-2023

Research Interests

General:

• 19th-20th century Japan
• 19th-20th century East Asia
• Empire & colonialism
• Nation-building & nationalism
• Folklore
• Memory
• Disaster studies
• Social history
• Environmental history
• Political history

Specific:

• 20th century disaster history
• 1896 Meiji Sanriku Earthquake
• 1923 Kantō Earthquake
• 1933 Sanriku Earthquake

Teaching Interests

Empire in Modern East Asia

Modern Japan

Environmental Global History

History of Disaster

Awards, Honors and Grants

2020-2024

PCB-AHA Conference Presidents Award • 2024

UCHRI Climate Action Training and Summer Dissertation Fellowship, 2024-25 • UC Santa Cruz 2024

UCSC History Department Summer Research Funding Award • UC Santa Cruz 2023

UCSC THI Summer Dissertation Fellowship • UC Santa Cruz 2023

UCSC History Department Summer Research Funding Award • UC Santa Cruz 2022

SSRC Dissertation Proposal Development Program • UC Santa Cruz 2022

National Humanities Center Graduate Student Summer Residency 2021 • Summer 2021 

Graduate Certificate in Teaching for Equity • Spring 2021

Irvine Memorial Fellowship for graduate study and coursework • UC Santa Cruz 2020

THI Graduate Student Success Fellowship • UC Santa Cruz 2021

THI Graduate Student Success Fellowship • UC Santa Cruz 2020

Mellon IHR Grad Fellowship • UC Santa Cruz 2020

Regents Fellowship • UC Santa Cruz 2019-2020

Selected Presentations

“Memorializing the Kantō Massacre: Calamity in Japan's Imperial Project” (Paper Presentation) in panel on “Labour, Knowledge, Development and Memory: Landscapes of Imperial Subjectivity in the Japanese Empire” at the Association for Asian Studies 2022.

“Resettlement: Chicago Story: A Cinematic Digital History Project” (Panelist) in experimental session with members of the project team of Resettlement: Chicago Story, at the American Historical Association Annual Meeting 2024.

"Learning War Through Catastrophe: Memorializing the 1923 Great Kantō Disaster in Imperial Japan" (Paper Presentation) in panel on "Disaster and Recovery" at the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association, 2024. 

Selected Publications

Bergamini, Clara. Review of Earthquake Children: Building Resilience from the Ruins of Tokyo, by Janet Borland. Children, Youth and Environments 33, no. 1 (2023): 188-190. doi:10.1353/cye.2023.0007.

Resettlement: Chicago Story. Full Spectrum Features, 2023. Collaborated with Full Spectrum’s web design and film production team as a researcher, content curator, and adviser for a cinematic digital history project